Dinocroc vs. Supergator (Blu-ray)

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All Rise...

Judge Dan Mancini thinks this flick is a Dinocroc of...

The Charge

One escaped. The other is about to be unleashed.

The Case

It should come as no surprise that the teaming of celebrated schlock producer
Roger Corman (Battle Beyond the
Stars) and softcore exploitation director Jim Wynorski (The Bare Wench
Project) would result in an abomination on the order of the made-for-TV
movie Dinocroc vs. Supergator. A sequel of sorts to Corman's previous
giant rampaging monster pictures, Dinocroc
and Supergator, this turkey opens with the outsized reptiles escaping
from the Kauai research facility where they were created. The marginally
competent CGI mayhem is punctuated by loads of exposition delivered in a
cellphone conversation between a curvy blond scientist (aren't they all?) and
slick bad guy Jason Drake (David Carradine, Kill Bill: Volume 2), who we can tell is a
greedy, amoral jerk because he spends almost the entire movie barking orders
into his cellphone while sunning beside his pool. The rest of the movie largely
consists of the monsters tooling around Hawaii, eating dolts standing near
enough to large bodies of water to facilitate the use of cheap special effects
in their sudden deaths. Eventually, do-gooder environmentalist and anti-poaching
activist Cassidy Swanson (Amy Rasimus, Girls Gone Psycho) is joined by
Cajun outdoor adventurer Bob Logan (Rib Hillis, Passions), and scientist
Paul Beaumont (Corey Landis, Lost in the Woods) in an attempt to save
promiscuous vacationers all over the island by turning the two giant monsters
against one another.

For the most part, Roger Corman's low-budget collaborations with the Syfy
network have failed to entertain even as camp, but Dinocroc vs.
Supergator is especially egregious—most likely because Syfy passed on
the project early on, forcing Corman and company to whip it together on an even
smaller budget than usual. One of the notable hallmarks of Corman's made-for-TV
and straight-to-video renaissance is the use of hokey, PG-rated CGI monster
violence. It doesn't get any hokier or PG-rated than the kills in Dinocroc
vs. Supergator, which mostly recycle the same two effects over and over
again: some dope or a couple of horny vacationers are snatched from the edge of
the water by the poorly composited digital Supergator, or some dope or a couple
of horny vacationers look up and scream before being snatched by the
Velociraptor-like Dinocroc, their rubbery CGI arms and legs twitching in his
equally rubbery mouth as he swallows them down. Both shots are incredibly
cheesy, and they each happen at least a half dozen times throughout the picture.
The movie's CGI cheapness is so blatantly cynical in its execution that it
completely fails to entertain even as kitsch.

The movie's only star power comes from the late David Carradine, who appears
to have agreed to work for only a day or so and on the condition that he was
allowed to shoot all of his scenes while sitting in a deck chair beside his
pool. Though he is Dinocroc vs. Supergator's human bad guy, he's so
disconnected from everything else happening in the flick that he barely
registers. The rest of the cast ranges from competent (Corey Landis) to
downright awful (Amy Rasimus). The rugged individualism of Rib Hillis'
outdoorsman character is telegraphed by a sleeveless shirt, sheathed knives on
his belt, a floppy safari bucket hat, and, for reasons unknown, fingerless
weightlifting gloves. These goofy wardrobe choices are all that constitute
character development in the movie (Landis' character wears a hideous Hawaiian
shirt, much insulted by the rest of the cast). We're told that Hillis'
adventurer is Cajun, but the actor doesn't even bother trying an accent. It's
all supposed to be self-consciously hilarious, I suppose, but not a single
moment of the movie made me crack a smile. Dinocroc vs. Supergator is
pure, unadulterated hackery.

The movie lands on Blu-ray in a 1080p/AVC transfer framed at 1.78:1. The
high definition treatment serves the movie well during the over-used aerial
shots of Kauai meant to make the production look far more expensive than it
actually was, but only exposes the gross limitations of the digital monster
effects. To be clear, I've seen a plethora of these modern made-for-TV monster
movies. I know that they tend to revel in the camp of their substandard visual
effects, but the CGI in Dinocroc vs. Supergator is unusually bad even for
the genre.

The Dolby TrueHD audio mix in 5.1 surround makes decent use of the entire
soundstage, including some directional panning, but doesn't reach far enough
into the low frequencies to really impress. One expects some thump and rumble in
a movie about giant reptiles, but this track doesn't deliver.

An audio commentary featuring Corman and Wynorski actually makes the movie
infinitely more entertaining as the duo pulls no punches in detailing their
cheapskate ways during the production—from getting a major discount from
the aerial tours company they used to shoot Kauai by featuring their
logo-emblazoned helicopter prominently in the feature, to using not-so-clever
editing to limit the number of actors they had to fly to the Hawaiian islands
from the mainland.

The only other extra is a trailer for the movie.

Dinocroc vs. Supergator works neither as a monster movie nor an
unintentional comedy. It's an awful waste of 87 minutes.